Armenia | Letters | Western Armenian
February, 2019Glimpses into the intimate lives of both men and women are few and far between in the Armenian literary tradition. Long dominated by cultural attitudes that viewed discussions of sexuality and desire as shameful and indecent, the late-nineteenth-century Ottoman Armenian society in which the letters featured here were written essentially silenced such expression in the public sphere.
Conversations of this sort, however, certainly did take place in the private sphere, as we see in these love letters exchanged between two prominent Armenian writers in 1895 Constantinople: Hrand Asadour and Zabel Donelian (more widely known by her pen name Sibyl). At the time, Hrand was the co-editor of Masis, one of the most widely circulated Armenian newspapers in the Ottoman Empire, while Zabel had already earned a reputation for her poetry, fiction, and articles in the Armenian press. Hrand had long been an admirer of Zabel’s work from afar and, in 1892, they began working together on the literary supplement of Masis, giving way to a friendship that slowly blossomed into love.
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